Authors: Jonathan Maberry
Jonatha nodded. “I’d bet my tenure that the natural ley line warps around the Hollow and crosses each of those farms, and because those farms—and only those—would in essence be pinched between the next natural ley line and the warped one, they sit in a zone of higher natural energy. That intensified energy kept them safe from the blight.”
LaMastra looked from the map to Ferro. “You buying any of this bullshit?”
“Actually,” Ferro said softly, “I’m starting to.” He sat back in his chair and swirled the coffee around in his cup. “However, as fascinating as the backstory is, Dr. Corbiel, I think we need to determine two things right now. No, make that three things. First, we need to know how to kill these bastards.”
“I’ll drink to that,” said LaMastra, and did.
“Then we need to know where they are,” Ferro continued. “And finally, we need to know how they’re created. If that’s a process we can identify, then maybe we can cut it off. Like when you’re getting rid of termites in a house…if you can kill off one breeding cycle you kill the infestation.”
“Well,” Jonatha said, “as far as where they are…I think Dark Hollow has to be the hub. Griswold’s almost certainly buried somewhere down there.”
Ferro looked at his watch. “There’s not enough daylight to go out there today, but I think we should plan on going there tomorrow.”
“I take it you’re signing on,” Crow asked.
Ferro gave him a withering look. “Yes, and when this is over I hope to Christ that I never see any of you again.”
“Amen,” agreed LaMastra. “When this is over I’m moving to Florida.”
“Why Florida?” Newton asked.
“Why not?”
“The second point is killing them,” Jonatha said, “and that might be some good news. The folklore has a lot to say about that.”
“What, we need to get a bunch of hammers and stakes?” LaMastra asked.
“No,” Weinstock interjected. “Val’s pretty much shown us that severe brain trauma will do the job. Though it’s possible that spinal damage might be a factor. At least one of Val’s shots severed Boyd’s upper spine and also broke his neck. All of those are possible or even probable methods of killing them. When in doubt, aim for the brain stem.”
“Beheading should work, too,” Jonatha said, “and we can probably count on fire.”
“Burn baby burn,” LaMastra said under his breath. Crow reached over and offered a high-five, which LaMastra, to his surprise, returned.
“And don’t forget garlic, that’s very important. In every culture where there are vampires, garlic is used both to ward them off and to kill them. I’m not sure how we’d introduce it into their bodies, though.”
“Garlic oil,” Weinstock said, looking at Ferro. “Could we use that somehow? Some kind of weapon?”
“Doable,” said the detective thoughtfully. “Definitely doable.”
“What about the last point,” Val asked quietly. “That matters most to me because of Mark. Can we do a test to determine if Mark is infected?”
Jonatha looked at her for a long time before she answered. “Yes,” she said slowly. “There is a way…but it’s dangerous.”
“So what else is new?” asked Newton sourly.
(2)
After Jonatha outlined her plan, Val said she needed some time. Crow walked her down to the hospital’s chapel, but at the door she stopped him with a gentle hand on his chest. “Honey, I need a few minutes to myself. I have to think this through…and maybe talk to Daddy about it.”
He nodded. “You don’t have to be there when we do this. Saul and I can do it. We have the two cops…”
“No.”
“You’re pregnant, Val…Crow Junior doesn’t need his mom to—”
“I said no, Crow.” She put a finger to his lips, then kissed him, sweetly and long. “Give me fifteen minutes, okay?”
Crow sighed, nodded, hating it.
Back in Weinstock’s office, he saw that Newton and Jonatha were gone—out to get sandwiches for everyone—and the others were watching TV coverage of the Halloween parties that were in full swing in town.
“There’s a lot of people in town,” Ferro said dubiously. “I don’t like it.”
“Tomorrow it will be even crazier,” Weinstock said.
“That’s just peachy.” LaMastra rubbed his eyes. “No way to keep control of this.”
Ferro said, “We’ve established that the Halloween stuff is going to happen. What precautions have you taken?”
Crow told them about the security team he’d brought into town. Ferro was familiar with BK and Billy Christmas. “They did security a couple of times for some big-ticket election events in Philly. BK’s a levelheaded guy.”
To Ferro, Weinstock said, “Are you concerned that something is going to happen during the holiday activities?”
Ferro pursed his lips, then shook his head. “I doubt it. With all the media coverage…it’d be too high profile. But with all that’s going on, we’ll have no way of seeing what is going on behind the scenes. There’ll be no way to keep track of who goes missing, which means we have to take a closer look at those statistics you’ve been keeping over the last month, Saul. You’ve logged an increase in mortality rates, and although each of them individually appears to be normal—house fires, car accidents, heart attacks, and such, in light of what we now know we have to ask ourselves whether any of these could have been attacks by Ruger or Boyd. And, if so, are any of these people also likely to be infected?”
“There’s also tourists. How would we know if any of them went missing?” LaMastra asked.
Crow looked at Weinstock. “Saul, how many people do you actually think may have been attacked?”
Weinstock licked his lips with a nervous tongue. “There’s no way to know for sure. I didn’t examine everyone. And I couldn’t arrange for all of them to be exhumed.”
“That’s not good,” LaMastra said. “If there are even one or two more of these things out there…”
Crow nodded. “I know.”
“Hey,” LaMastra asked, snapping his fingers, “what about holy water and crosses?”
“Jonatha said that wouldn’t work. At best it would depend on the faith of the vampire—not, as is sometimes mentioned in fiction, on the faith of the person holding the cross. At worst they won’t work at all. Besides, even if the vampire is religious, it’s a crucifix, not a cross.”
“Not if the vampire is a Protestant,” Ferro offered. “They don’t use the crucifix, they go for the empty cross, symbolic of the resurrection, not the whole death-for-sins thing.”
“Sure,” said LaMastra. “Plus, the vampire could be Amish or a Mormon, or even a Jehovah’s Witness.”
“Or Muslim or Buddhist or Hindu,” Crow said.
“Or Jewish,” Weinstock offered hopefully.
“Great,” snapped LaMastra. “Go wave a Star of David at Ruger.”
Weinstock shook his head. “Actually a mezuzah would be better. It’s symbolic of the torah and the laws of Moses. Far more religiously significant than the Star.”
“Oh.”
“But even so,” Weinstock continued thoughtfully, “would that protect men against a vampire who didn’t believe in Judaism?”
Crow said, “My, my, here we are discussing the actual power of God.” He smiled and shook his head. “I mean, think about it. We are discussing which symbols of God will stop vampires. That’s quite a topic. And doesn’t it suggest that God is actually real? That He has power that can actually affect things in our world?”
“Well no shit,” said LaMastra. “What’s your problem? Don’t you believe in God?”
“Not much, no.”
Ferro asked, “What were you before you lost your faith?”
Crow’s eyes were like flint. “A child,” he said. “I had it beaten out of me at an early age.”
“I’ll stick with fire,” Weinstock said. “Fire purifies, as the saying goes.”
“It would be interesting,” said Ferro, “to see how we could burn them without burning down your whole town and all the surrounding forestland.”
They sat and thought about that for a while. Crow said, “Okay, this is farm country. Getting plenty of garlic is not a problem. We ought to be able to rustle up a hundred tons of it if we have to.”
“I’m toying with the idea of bathing in it,” said LaMastra.
To Crow, Ferro said, “Is your fiancée going to be okay with this? With what we have to do to her brother?”
“It was her idea in the first place.”
“She’s a pretty tough lady.”
“You have no idea, Frank.”
Ferro nodded. “You agree we have to do this, right?”
“Yeah, damn it.”
“Mark is my brother,” Val said from the doorway. They could all see that she’d been crying, but her mouth was a hard line. “He’s…dead, and that’s something I’ll have to live with, but I can’t go on without knowing if he…if he…” Even she could not say it. No one blamed her. “But we have a responsibility to this town. If Mark and Connie are infected we have to know. I have to know. I owe it to the town, and to my baby.”
“I’m sorry,” Ferro said softly.
She nodded, accepting it. “It’s getting dark. If we have to do this, let’s do it now.” She paused and stifled a sob.
“Val,” said Ferro, “you should probably stay here while we—”
“No!” she snapped. “Listen to me, Frank. All of you listen. Mark is
my
brother. I love him. Do you think I’ll let him be alone through this?” Her voice was as harsh as a slap across Ferro’s face, and he winced. “Jonatha said that in order to test him we have to make him taste blood, that we have to put it in his mouth. Well, here’s what we’re going to do. Crow, you and Vince are going to hustle your asses out to the closest farm stand and buy all the garlic they have. As soon as you get back we’re going to go right down to the morgue, and you men are going to hold him down, and I am going to cut open my thumb and spill my blood, my family’s blood, into my brother’s mouth. That is what’s going to happen. Don’t you dare try to tell me it’s not.”
The men stared at her in amazement, each one of them trying to measure their personal courage to see if it came close to matching hers. At that moment, there was not a man in that room who wouldn’t have died for her.
“And if my brother is one of them, if he’s become a…a…”
“Val,” Crow whispered, touching her.
She looked down at his hand then into his eyes. “If Mark is a vampire,” she said in a deadly whisper, “then we will do what needs to be done!” She paused for a moment. “And may God have mercy on us all.”
By the time Crow and LaMastra got back from the farm goods stand, the others had things ready to go. Val was on the far side of the morgue, standing by one of the room’s two large stainless-steel surgical tables, arms folded under her breasts, head bowed, staring down at a body completely covered by a clean white sheet.
Ferro said, “What did you get?”
“Cloves and a couple of big jars of garlic oil in gelcaps. I had a brainstorm while I was out.”
“Hit me.”
“If we took a syringe and drew the oil out of the gelcaps and then injected them into shotgun shells, then maybe used a lighter to seal the punctures…”
“That might just be brilliant,” Ferro said.
“It’ll gum up the guns,” LaMasta said, “but who cares?”
Jonatha joined them and took one of the sacks of garlic bulbs LaMasta carried. “I’ll get to work.” She and Newton used a mortar and pestle to smash the bulbs into a lumpy paste and then smeared the door frame.
Weinstock fished in the other sack for a big bulb and began peeling off the papery skin. “We should all eat a couple of cloves,” he said, handing them out.
“I hate garlic,” Newton said, “it makes me sick.”
“Consider your alternatives.” Weinstock held out the clove, and Newton took it. Nobody liked the taste, but they all had seconds and thirds.
Ferro and LaMastra went to work on the shotgun shells and Crow went over to Val. He touched her face. She didn’t react, and he realized that tenderness was probably the last thing she needed right now, so he cleared his throat and withdrew his hand. “We’ll be ready soon,” he said.
Weinstock joined them, “Val, I don’t like the idea of you cutting herself and dripping blood all over, so I’m going to use a syringe and draw off a few cc’s. I think it’ll be safer that way. No telling what kind of infection we might be dealing with here.”
“Okay,” Val said. She held out her arm and Weinstock wrapped a rubber tourniquet around it, swabbed her with alcohol, slapped her inner arm to get a vein, and drew off a full syringe. He put a Band-Aid over the puncture and gave her some cloves to chew.
Val lifted the bottom corner of the sheet to show Crow what they’d done. Mark’s ankles were tied to the table with several turns of thick surgical gauze. “Wrists, too,” she said. Though her eyes were dry there was a strange deadness to her voice that scared Crow.
“We’re just about ready,” Ferro called.
Val touched Crow’s arm. “Give me just another minute with him, honey, okay?”
“Sure, baby, whatever you need.” He kissed her cheek and led Weinstock over to where the cops were working. As the detectives finished doctoring the shells Crow loaded them into the shotgun.
Very quietly LaMastra said, “Tell you one thing, Crow, and don’t take no offense.”
“Yeah?”
“Your lady has more balls than any of us.”
Crow grinned.
“Seriously,” LaMastra said, “you’re a lucky guy.”
Crow glanced over to where Val stood looking down at her dead brother. “Yes I am,” Crow said. He slid in the last shell in and handed the weapon to Ferro.
Ferro took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then jacked a round into the chamber. Val looked up at the sound. “Ready,” he said.
Everyone came and stood in a loose circle around the table. LaMastra crossed himself, drew his Sig Sauer 9mm, and racked the slide.
Val looked at Newton, who held two handfuls of the pulped garlic. Mush dripped from between his fingers. He nodded, genuinely unable to speak for the dry stricture of his throat.
“Saul?” she asked.
He raised the syringe. “Ready as I can be.”
Crow took a position by Val’s side. “I’m here, babe.” In his left hand he had one of the knobby uncrushed garlic bulbs, and in the other his Beretta 92F. “Let’s go,” he said, “let’s get it done.”
Faced with the moment of truth, even Val’s nerve wavered, but slightly. She reached out to touch the sheet that had been folded up to cover Mark’s chest and face. She paused, closed her eyes, and murmured something, perhaps a brief prayer, perhaps only her brother’s name, then she took the edge of the sheet between her strong fingers, made a white-knuckled fist, and pulled back the cloth.
If she expected to see a monster, she was wrong. Mark looked dead, and that was frightening enough, but nothing about him was actually fearsome. His familiar features were distorted to a waxy whiteness and a gauntness that was the result of a total loss of blood. He seemed much older, more like her father than ever, and shrunken. Weinstock had wrapped some gauze around his throat to hide the savage wounds, but Val could see the lumpy roughness along the left side just below the chin.
“Oh, Mark,” she whispered brokenly and bent forward to kiss his forehead.
Weinstock suddenly reached for her. “Val…don’t!”
She stopped, looked at Weinstock for a moment, then nodded and straightened. “Right,” she said. “You’re right.” She sniffed and angrily brushed away a tear.
Crow wanted to take her in his arms, hold her, tell her that it was going to be all right and be able to mean it. Instead he ground his teeth as a wave of bilious hatred for Ubel Griswold boiled up from deep inside. No hell would be deep enough or hot enough to punish his black, murderous soul.
“Okay, Saul,” Val said, “give me the needle.”
“I’d rather do it myself…”
“Saul. This is mine to do.”
Weinstock reluctantly handed over the syringe. Val held it up, looking at the dark red blood that filled its barrel, then turned the tip of the needle downward.
“Okay, troops,” warned Crow, “stay sharp.”
Val touched Mark’s face with the fingertips of her other hand. She stroked his cheek lightly, placed her fingers on his lips, and parted them gently, then she carefully inserted the needle between the dry teeth. LaMastra, Ferro, and Crow each slipped their fingers into the trigger guards of their weapons. Everyone was sweating heavily. Val’s breath was rasping as if she had been running for miles under a hot sun. There was a bright feverish quality to her face as she took one last steadying breath and depressed the plunger. Her own salty, clean, innocent blood sprayed into the open mouth of her dead brother.
Crow leaned forward, pointing his pistol at Mark’s temple. Ferro stood at the foot of the table, aiming the shotgun at the ceiling because Val and Crow were in the line of fire. Sweat dripped into his eyes. On the wall the, each tick of the clock was as sharp as the snap of dry twigs.
Mark did not move. Nothing flinched, nothing changed. As Val removed the needle from between his teeth a single drop fell onto his lower lip. It glistened in the fluorescent light.
“Step back,” Ferro said, and Val and Crow shifted out of the line of fire; Ferro brought the shotgun down and aimed it at Mark’s head. The barrel shook visibly as tension vibrated in every cell of Ferro’s body. The lines beside his mouth were taut as fiddle strings. Beside him, LaMastra held his pistol in a two-hand shooter’s grip and whispered, “Hail Mary, Mother of grace…”
Newton stood apart, his eyes filling with tears of fear and tension.
A full minute passed.
Nothing happened. Another minute. Two. Three.
“It’s not happening,” whispered LaMastra. “Goddamn. Goddamn.”
Another minute passed. The room remained still, the dead stayed dead.
Val Guthrie exhaled a lungful of air that had been burning in her chest. She sagged forward, laying her hands on Mark’s chest as she closed her eyes in exhausted relief. “Thank God!” she said, and meant it. “It’s over.” She burst into tears.
That seemed to break the spell. They all breathed out huge lungfuls of air, their bodies slumping, guns lowering, faces breaking into triumphant smiles. They grinned and slapped each other on the back as if they had just won a great victory.
LaMastra prodded Mark with his pistol, but the only movement he saw was the movement he caused. Smiling, he reholstered his gun and dragged his forearm across his face. Newton abruptly laughed out loud, and though such a thing was horribly inappropriate, Weinstock and LaMastra found themselves laughing, too. Their laughter and Val’s tears meant the same, felt the same, and cost as much. Ferro slumped back against a work table and lowered his gun. He looked fifteen years older and he struggled to unwrap a stick of gun with badly shaking hands.
Val huddled over Mark, laying the side of her face on his chest, and wept brokenly.
Only Crow stood completely apart from it all. He felt the same tension, but didn’t share the release. He slowly slid his pistol into the holster, placed a hand on Val’s back, and failed to think of one single useful thing to say.
Val leaned over to kiss Mark’s forehead, daring it now that she knew it was safe. Distantly she knew that the true impact of his death would hit her now; now the true storms of grief would come slashing. Her lips lightly brushed the cold flesh of his brow. “Go to sleep, baby brother,” she murmured in a small voice that came close to breaking Crow’s heart.
And then Mark Guthrie’s eyes snapped open.
With a snarl of inhuman rage and hunger he reared up, snapping the gauze bindings as if they were crepe paper, and lunged off the table at Val.
Val screamed in total horror and recoiled, but Mark’s hands caught her elbow and the shoulder of her shirt. His grip was as hard as iron and as cold as arctic ice.
“Watch!” Ferro yelled and swung the shotgun around, trying to find a line of sight to get a clear shot, but Val was in the way.
Crow ripped his gun out its holster and launched himself at Mark, pistol-whipping him across the face, opening a deep three-inch gash on Mark’s cheek that did not bleed. Mark let go of Val’s elbow and backhanded Crow with a blow so hard and fast that it lifted him and sent him crashing into Newton. They both went down in a painful tangle of limbs. Newton’s head hit the hard floor with a meaty crunch.
Growling, Mark pulled Val to him, grabbing her short black hair and yanking her head back to expose her throat. His teeth snapped at her, but she jammed her hands against his chest and fought the pull, screaming all the while. Ferro still could not get his shot and tried shifting around, bellowing at Val to move out of the way even though it was impossible. Yanking out his gun, LaMastra snapped off a shot, but Weinstock knocked his arm upward and the shot went high and wide, shattering the clock.
“You’ll hit Val!” Weinstock yelled, and together he and a furious LaMastra leapt across the table at Mark. The doctor grabbed Mark’s arms and tried to wrench his grip away from the struggling Val; LaMastra caught Mark around the head in a powerful judo choke that would have rendered any strong man helpless in seconds by cutting off all blood to the brain. Unfortunately there was no flow of blood anywhere in Mark’s body and the choke, despite all of LaMastra’s considerable strength, was useless. Spitting with fury, Mark released Val with one hand and reached over his shoulder to take hold of LaMastra’s shirt collar. Mark whipped his arm forward and LaMastra felt himself flying through the air, propelled with incredible force. He crashed into the medicine chest with an explosion of jagged glass splinters and twisted metal, but in his flight his big right shoe caught Ferro perfectly on the point of the jaw and spun him around and his finger jerked the trigger of the shotgun, sending garlic-soaked pellets into the concrete ceiling. Ferro slumped against the counter and began to sag down to his knees, the room swimming around him. He landed next to LaMastra, who was dazed and bleeding from glass cuts on his face.
Weinstock had thrown his body directly between Mark and Val, literally lying on the one arm that still held Val. He punched at Mark with both fists, even as Val sought to tear at the waxy hand that held her like a vise. Since he could no longer get to Val, Mark darted his head forward, fast as a snake, and sank his teeth right through the white lab coat and into the meat of Saul Weinstock’s shoulder.
The doctor screamed at the searing agony as blood exploded from his arm, drenching his sleeve and spraying Mark’s face with a fine crimson mist. The smell and taste of blood drove Mark into an absolute frenzy.
“GET HIM OFF ME!” shrieked Weinstock, beating at Mark’s face with his fists, smashing cartilage and tearing flesh, but accomplishing nothing.
Jonatha stepped up behind him and swung a fire extinguisher at Mark’s back. The blow bounced off him, but the force was enough to make him release his hold on Weinstock. Still screaming, Weinstock dropped to the floor and scuttled away from him. Released from Mark’s grip, Val overbalanced and fell the other way, landing painfully on elbow and spine.
Jonatha raised the red fire extinguisher again but as she swung it, Mark swatted it out of the air so hard that the tank flew ten feet across the room and buried itself in the wall. The force of Mark’s blow spun Jonatha around and she pirouetted right into the near wall, struck her forehead, and sagged to the floor, out cold.
By now Ferro and Crow had both struggled to their feet and rushed in to attack. Ferro grabbed his shotgun and slammed Mark with the stock, a blow that would have killed an ordinary man, and even though the blow shattered Mark’s jaw and partially tore away his right ear, it did not stop him. The force of the blow spun Ferro, and he slipped on Weinstock’s blood and almost fell. Crow, more agile, scooped up a garlic bulb as he ran and threw it without breaking stride as deftly as any third baseman plucking a line drive and throwing to first to pick off the runner. The garlic struck Mark in the eye, and it was the first thing that had gotten any response. Mark staggered back, clapping both hands to his eye.
“SHOOT HIM!” screamed Val, struggling to sit up despite the searing pain in her spine; but Ferro was already bringing up the gun. It took only a second to snap it up to his shoulder and aim it, but in that second Mark slapped it out of Ferro’s hand with a savage blow, then Mark grabbed Ferro’s throat with both hands and began to to pull him toward his broken, gaping mouth.
Crow leapt at Mark, jumping into the air for a powerful kick that packed all of Crow’s weight and speed into it. The kick caught Mark on the side of the chest and knocked him back several feet, but he kept his hold on Ferro. Crow landed, spun, and kicked Mark in the knee, trying to cripple his leg, hoping for damage to do what mere pain could not. Mark’s leg twisted, but did not collapse despite the audible crunch of bone and cartilage. Before Crow could attack the same leg again, Mark snapped out with one hand and caught Crow by the shirtfront and slammed Ferro and Crow together once, twice, and then swept his hands apart, hurling them into opposite walls. Both men fell bonelessly to the floor.